Civil liberties, justice, crime

Currently 79,412 people are in UK prisons. That is over twice as many, per population , as the Netherlands, Norway, or Finland, though only one-fifth the rate of the USA. The number is likely to increase with an increase in the sentencing powers of magistrates’ courts and laws such as the Police and Crime Bill that will criminalise more people. The government aims to imprison more people and new prisons are currently being planned. The media and government portray prisoners as monstrous people. We are told that the purpose of prisons is to lock up dangerous people, to keep us safe that prisons...

Boris Johnson’s bubble has burst. Most people accept that the government has had to issue instructions over Covid: self-isolate, test, reduce social contact in various ways, all the rest. All governments have done fairly similar, in one way or another, and varying with different geographical conditions. Most people even accept that the governments, dealing with a new virus, will be bound to make mis-steps. Even those, like us on Solidarity , who are political opponents of all the existing governments, recognise that on Covid it is better that we all follow even flawed rules, to give us all...

A Metropolitan Police officer, PC David Carrick, accused of sex offences against four women, is facing nine additional charges relating to four other alleged victims. Carrick now faces charges relating to 29 alleged offences, including 13 counts of rape, against eight women between 2009 and 2020. He is due to appear at the St Albans court on 28 January for a mention hearing relating to those charges, with a provisional trial date in April. Since the torture and murder of Sarah Everard there has been increasing attention to violence against women by police officers. Despite this the government...

On Saturday 15 January, I spoke at the “Kill the Bill” demonstration in London. The demo protested both the Policing Bill and the Nationalities and Borders Bill. We need an ongoing movement against both pieces of legislation, which represent a slide towards authoritarianism. The government’s war on migrants has direct industrial implications for our union (PCS) members who work in the Border Force. The government wants our members to drag migrant boats back towards France. Given that these boats are frequently overcrowded and unseaworthy, such a policy greatly increases the danger to the...

January 15 has been named as a “national day of action” against the Tory Police Bill (now in its last, Report and Third Reading, stage in the Lords), and Another Europe is Possible and others including the Labour Campaign for Free Movement will protest against both the Police Bill and the Borders Bill (starting Lords committee stage 27 January) the same day in London. 12pm, Saturday 15 January, Lincoln's Inn Fields, WC2A 3TL We urge readers to back the protests in London and elsewhere. Sadly, even as late as 11 January, protest times and places for 15 January have been released only for a few...

Onlookers in the public gallery, people across Bristol, and many more beyond celebrated on 5 January 2022 as the “Colston Four” were found not guilty of criminal damage to the slave trader’s statue. The defence argued that the statue itself constituted an offence under section five of the Public Order Act, and the Indecent Displays Act; and that conviction would be disproportionate infringement of rights under the Human Rights Act 1998. The prosecution argued that the crimes of Edward Colston — enslaving and killing tens of thousands — were irrelevant. While we are be critical of the first two...

When Anthony Walgate was found dead outside Stephen Port’s flat in June 2014, the police were quick to conclude it was a gay sex worker accidentally overdosing on GHB.

A protestor who took part in a “Kill the Bill” protest in Bristol in March has today (17 December) been sentenced to 14 years in prison, convicted of “riot” and multiple counts of “arson”. This is a terrifying prelude of worse to come if the expanded Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — and other authoritarian legislation — is passed. Whatever we think of 25 year old Ryan Roberts' actions on that protest, this forms part of a politically-motivated set of prosecutions and extreme sentencing. When I last wrote about this, two months ago, dozens had been charged, and of the nine sentenced...

As we go to press, talk is rife of Tory moves to oust Boris Johnson — in favour, alas, of someone probably even more right-wing. The Tory government is on the back foot, floundering on Covid, commanding little trust or credit, u-turning again and again. And yet its Borders Bill (went to Lords 8 December), Police Bill (entered final Lords stage 8 December), and Health and Social Care Bill (Lords committee stage starts 11 January) are going through Parliament with little loud and active opposition. The left seems to be on the back foot, too. There are millions who oppose the Tories from the left...